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Dead Souls

Dead Souls
  • Author(s): Nikolai Gogol
  • Location(s): Russia
  • Genre(s): Fiction, Historical
  • Era(s): 1840s

Nikolai Gogol’s ‘epic poem in prose’, Dead Souls is a damning indictment of a corrupt society, translated from the Russian with an introduction and notes by Robert A. Maguire in Penguin Classics. Chichikov, a mysterious stranger, arrives in the...

Deathless

Deathless
  • Author(s): Catherynne M Valente
  • Location(s): Russia
  • Genre(s): Fantasy, Fiction
  • Era(s): 20th century

Koschei the Deathless is to Russian folklore what devils or wicked witches are to European culture: a menacing, evil figure; the villain of countless stories which have been passed on through story and text for generations. But Koschei has...

Der Königsberg-Plan

Der Königsberg-Plan
  • Author(s): Alexander Weiss
  • Location(s): Berlin, Kaliningrad (Königsberg)
  • Genre(s): Thriller
  • Era(s): 1945 and modern

Herr Parker, bitte folgen Sie mir. Wir haben nicht viel Zeit. Die Kanzlerin muss Berlin in einer Stunde verlassen – und will Sie vorher sehen.” Königsberg, 1945. Die Rote Armee rüstet sich zum Sturm auf die Stadt, in der...

Devil’s Acre

Devil’s Acre
  • Author(s): Jonathan Bastable
  • Location(s): Moscow, St Petersburg (Leningrad)
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): 1812-1990s

Devil’s Acre is a novel about love, Russia and forbidden architecture. Moscow, 1982. The oppressive Soviet regime is solidly in place: Leonid Brezhnev is praised to the skies for the brilliance of his unreadable memoirs: and the KGB is...

Disappearing Earth

Disappearing Earth
  • Author(s): Julia Phillips
  • Location(s): Kamchatka
  • Genre(s): Fiction, Mystery
  • Era(s): Present day

One August afternoon, on the shoreline of the north-eastern edge of Russia, two sisters are abducted. In the ensuing weeks, then months, the police investigation turns up nothing. Echoes of the disappearance reverberate across a tightly woven community, with...

Distant Annihilation

Distant Annihilation
  • Author(s): Azam Hossain
  • Location(s): Iran, Russia, Sweden, Turkey
  • Genre(s): Thriller
  • Era(s): Modern

Slaughter in the Balkans, corruption, amorous women, an insurgency in the harsh wastes of a Central Asian failed state, murderous henchman, insufferable natives, interrogation by the enemy, theocratic megalomania, treachery, a sinister crime lord and pursuit by bloodthirsty maniacs...

Doctor Zhivago

Doctor Zhivago
  • Author(s): Boris Pasternak
  • Location(s): Russia
  • Genre(s): Fiction, Historical
  • Era(s): Russian Revolution

This epic tale about the effects of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath on a bourgeois family was not published in the Soviet Union until 1987. One of the results of its publication in the West was Pasternak’s complete...

Doomed Spy

Doomed Spy
  • Author(s): J R Rogers
  • Location(s): Kinshasa, London, Montevideo, Moscow
  • Genre(s): Fiction, Suspense, Thriller
  • Era(s): 1960

From Leopoldville, to Antwerp to the quiet South American capital of Montevideo, Uruguay, Doomed Spy is a psychological spy thriller set in an unconventional distant posting at the height of the Cold War. At the center of the intrigue...

Dr Zhivago

Dr Zhivago
  • Author(s): Boris Pasternak
  • Location(s): Russia
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): Russian Revolution

Banned in the Soviet Union until 1988, Doctor Zhivago is the epic story of the life and loves of a poet-physician during the turmoil of the Russian Revolution. Taking his family from Moscow to shelter in the Ural Mountains,...

Eastern Horizons

Eastern Horizons
  • Author(s): Levison Wood
  • Location(s): Central Asia, India, Russia
  • Genre(s): Travelogue
  • Era(s): Modern

Levison Wood was only 22 when he decided to hitch-hike from England to India through Russia, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, but he wasn’t the conventional follower of the hippy trail. A fascination with the deeds of the early explorers,...

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